When I was a little girl, I was petrified of heavy rain.

My senses were overwhelmed with panic as the reality of powerlessness would take hold. The natural world was too much to take in for me; its rage, its cry—called me home. The sound of thunder would envelop my heart as it began to beat in time with the pounding.

No voice could soothe me. No person could reassure me that I wasn’t in grave danger of being swallowed by a flood.

She could.

Her arms were all that helped ease my worried heart. I remember the faint smell of Noxema and Jean Nate. I buried myself in it until the pounding left my ears, and the rain tickled the ground. Her embrace was the one. Like being in a cocoon and waiting to emerge stronger—still delicate but more beautiful. In her arms I transformed, somehow.

After the rain I felt I’d conquered something. She was the one—my shelter from the rain. The only one in this world I could see as a child.

I bow to you, my beautiful mother.

Gaia. Sent for my shelter alone; to nourish me.

Duplicity.

I thought I had a secret key (a skeleton key).

No one else on this planet had ever loved before or ever could again. Romeo and Juliet were simply an antiquated version of us.

Our first experience with a duplicitous person is earth shattering.

The earth crumbles beneath our feet as we run.

Every step we ran before the last, is now crumbled into a dark abyss—being swallowed by the Milky Way.

We run just fast enough, but still terrifyingly aware that we were almost consumed back into the debris of the universe.

He was the one. He taught me about the kind of love people kill in the name of—die for. His very existence was a force of nature—a storm waiting for the perfect moment of stillness.

He taught me that I could fall apart and then slowly learn to trust myself again.

I bow to you, dear wolf.

Revealing the secrets held in our heart is like a game of Russian roulette. Will this set us free? Will we suddenly inhale our life force with such desperation because of the freedom and gratitude that our life didn’t end in this moment of truth? Or will we be swallowed by judgment only affirming cold sour death at our very own hands?

She was the one.

The friend who showed the kind of love a mother can, only she didn’t birth me. She birthed the awakening of trust in something outside of my own blood line. She was the one to provide shelter from the storm of doubt, but not with her arms. She sat across from me and offered her heart.

I bow to you, dear friend.

Our storms can break us like deep penetrating compound fractures that will forever leave a trace of a limp. Others may recognize our gait because they too walk with one.

I bow to the one who shelters me.

I bow to the one who teaches me.

I bow to you dear heart for staying open. You can still flow like the ocean.

It was you all along. You’re the one, and I recognize you everywhere.

Bow to your teachers—the lost souls who feared your depths or feared their own, because they turn out to be your greatest teachers.

Bow to the ones who lead us to question this fixed identity that we cling to.

Is a piece of their darkness a piece of you too? How does that taste in your mouth?

Heavy like lead, we must bow to its bitterness—for the reminder of the fluidity in our veins which leads us to find deeper space in our heart.

Bow to the ones who led you to suffering because without the pain, how might we know the strength of our own soul.

Bow to the soft hearted and accepting for they help restore our faith; a reminder of what’s inside of our very being. We love them because they are us.

Bow to all of them.

They are pieces of ourselves that we just haven’t seen yet.

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Apprentice Editor: Jess Sheppard/Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Flickr